[geeks] Swapping hard drives in a G4

[Mike Hebel]

On Sep 5, 2006, at 6:16 PM, Brian Dunbar wrote:

> I've got two G4 Powerbooks.  They do not have the sam RAM or processor
> speed.  OS on the first is 10.4.6
>
> The LCD backlight on the first has crapped out.  Is it possible to
> simply plug the hard drive from the one with a broken LCD to the 
> healthy
>  laptop with a minimum of fuss and bother from the operating system?

Yes.  That should work without any issues.  Note I said "should" only 
because there might be a .kext or something you have to delete or 
re-load.

> And yes I could simply move everything from one to the other.  But.
>
> I'm due for an new Mac from work Real Soon Now.  The less fuss and
> bother I have to get up and running for a few weeks the better.  The
> thing works it's just not very usable as a laptop and the lack of the
> LCD for a second screen on my desk is driving me bats.

Run the first laptop in Firwire Target Mode then run the Setup 
Assistant on the second.  Not sure how that will work going from 
10.4->10.3 or less but it's probably the easiest if you're not going to 
just swap drives.

IIRC that has the option to pull all the old user information and files 
and apps over to the new system and have it almost literally be a clone 
of the old system.

I found this out when taking the data from my 10.2 clamshell to the 
10.3 G5 iMac.  In fact it copied more than what I wanted because I 
wasn't paying attention.

At least I think it was the Setup Assistant that I used - it's been a 
little while.

Mike Hebel
----
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